Standing over a bedsheet in his suite at the Chatwal hotel on Tuesday, artist Abdullah Qandeel dips his paint-splattered hand into a canister of brushes.
“Gabby, get me that picture,” he calls to his assistant, who brings him a framed black-and-white photograph that previously hung on the wall of the four-star hotel room.
Without hesitation, the 26-year-old Saudi swirls blobs of paint onto the glass frame and, 20 minutes later — presto! — it’s a Qandeel original.
Wherever the bad-boy artist goes, he finds a canvas, even if it doesn’t technically belong to him.
In November, he made headlines after it was discovered that he had painted a mural on the wall and staircase of his suite at Midtown’s 6 Columbus hotel.
Qandeel was charged with vandalism and spent the night in jail. He says the area has since been painted over, and that he paid for the renovations. (6 Columbus didn’t return calls for comment.)
“I was celebrating life. I didn’t think the hotel would find it a negative thing that I grabbed a brush and shared my positive feelings on the wall,” he explains.
While the wealthy, jet-setting playboy could be written off as just another entitled brat with a paintbrush, the art world is taking a different view.
Last October, his abstract painting “The Enemy Within” sold for a whopping $209,000 — 10 times the estimated price — at a Sotheby’s auction in Doha, Qatar.
While the buyer is unknown, Qandeel’s collectors include heir Charles Rockefeller, the Saudi royal family, Russian businessmen such as Timur Sardarov, and actors Cuba Gooding Jr. (whom he met in the lobby of the Mercer Hotel) and Adrian Grenier.
This week, Qandeel’s latest masterpiece — a colorful 6½-foot-by-6½-foot canvas called “The Race” — is on display at Sotheby’s, where it’s hanging alongside works by Keith Haring, Helen Frankenthaler and Alexander Calder.
His piece will be auctioned off in Doha on April 21.
On Tuesday night, Qandeel, dressed in a cobalt blue T-shirt, was busy schmoozing with deep-pocketed collectors at the Upper East Side auction house.
“Look around. I’m only 26. Most of these mother-f–kers are dead,” he says, referring to the artists whose work fills the expansive space. “Results get me excited. Knowing I sold a painting gets me excited. And this will go for $1 million,” he predicts.
Who exactly is this self-taught artist who drops boastful quotes that would make Kanye West blush?
When he isn’t in his native country or at his studio in Mallorca, Spain, Qandeel lives in and out of posh Manhattan hotels, where he travels with an entourage that includes his manager and his assistant, who is always ready with a fresh marker.
He enjoys lunching at Madison Avenue’s Sant Ambroeus, and his casual style of dress is almost always accompanied by an errant splatter. (“Even if it’s a Tom Ford or Kiton suit, I’ve learned to accept that all of my clothes will have paint on them.”)
The son of Saudi investor Omar Qandeel, at age 10 he moved to England, where he attended boarding school and, later, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst with Prince William.
“I had breakfast with him several times and he was a very nice chap,” he says of the Duke of Cambridge.
He bounced around colleges in the Midwest but never graduated, before moving in 2010 to New York, where he seriously pursued art. In 2011, he sold his first painting, “God Bless Julian Schnabel,” to a wealthy Israeli businessman in Monte Carlo for $19,500.
After holding a show in Soho in 2013, he caught the eye of Sotheby’s Aileen Agopian.
“We had seen one of his shows downtown and were intrigued,” says Agopian. “We got the feeling this is someone we should pay attention to.”
(Just last week, Qandeel paid tribute to Schnabel in person while dining at Mr. Chow. Spotting his hero nearby, he grabbed a restaurant napkin and used markers to turn it into an abstract work. “I made a beautiful napkin for him. I didn’t talk to anyone at dinner. I said, ‘Excuse me, I’m making something for Mr. Schnabel.’” Marching over to Schnabel, he pronounced: “Listen, Julian, I dedicate this to you.”)
https://instagram.com/p/zlmvSzJNfn/?modal=true
Schnabel should probably take notice.
Last April, Qandeel sold his first painting at Sotheby’s for $57,500, followed by the epic sale of “The Enemy Within,” which Agopian says led to “frenetic bidding.”
“I net easily $1.5 million a year,” says Qandeel.
I didn’t think the hotel would find it a negative thing that I grabbed a brush and I shared my positive feelings on the wall.
- Abdullah Qandeel on painting on a hotel wall, which got him jailed
The income initially helped him convince his dubious family he could make a living as an artist.
“Now that I am one of the leading players in the art market, they have respect for what I’ve done,” he says. “I had to carve it out. My father was tough on me. I was only handed education.”
And so, when the story of his arrest got picked up around the world, Qandeel, a Muslim, was happy.
“It was a positive story. When you see a Saudi being arrested, you automatically think, ‘Oh, not again, another radicalized one,’ but no, this guy was making art,” he says.
“It’s a big point,” he continues. “Because if you take any newspaper today, what are you going to see about Arabs and Muslims? It’s sad, so one droplet of paint at a time, we are changing the world. I am happy to show a different side of the religion — a side of color, beauty and expression.”
Asked if there is a hotel in New York that he’d want to paint, the bearded artist — who mysteriously says he is in love, but single — doesn’t miss a beat.
“There is one hotel I’d love to paint,” he says. “Yeah, there is one,” before pausing like a villain in a comic-book movie.
“A hotel I’d love to paint is 6 Columbus. Yes.”